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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29353500">Giraffes Aren't Real</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/RubyCrystalAPasta/pseuds/RubyCrystalAPasta'>RubyCrystalAPasta</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Runaway System [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>All For The Game - Nora Sakavic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dissociative Identity Disorder, Gen, Neil is in a system, POV Neil Josten</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 03:25:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,105</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29353500</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/RubyCrystalAPasta/pseuds/RubyCrystalAPasta</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Excerpt: There were times when all he did for minutes at a time were stare blankly into space, trying to concentrate on being in his own body, in his own head, while some phantom force seemed to attempt to shut him out into oblivion. He couldn’t allow that, not when it was so important to behave for his mother, not when their lives were on the line. </p><p>_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________</p><p>Neil has DID (Disassociative Identity Disorder) and how he began to realize it</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Runaway System [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2156202</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>114</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Giraffes Aren't Real</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>As somebody who is not in a system of their own, though has a friend who is, if there is anything that I wrote that is offensive or not correct or needs to be changed, please let me know of it! This might become a series, though I'm not completely sure. Let me know what y'all think!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To say that Neil was his own, unique, person would be like saying that giraffes were real.</p><p> Sure, it seemed completely true in a statement, as there was evidence that giraffes existed. But there were times when a person could look past the televised documentaries, the zoos that kept animals in environments that they weren’t used to, and the stuffed plushies that claimed of their existence. The facts were all there, and giraffes not existing was a fact that any reasonable person could get behind. </p><p>Some may claim that giraffes were real because they’ve fed them at zoos or seen them in safaris, but the truth was that the government had created these creatures and made them into animatronics to surveillance what an ordinary person may do when they’re alone. Who would be suspicious of a long-necked, long-tongue creature who barely made any noise at all? </p><p>And it was, in that sense, that Neil was not, in fact, his own person. He’d known this since he was five, when he began to have blackouts of a sort, coming back to himself in the middle of a conversation with his mother, pain coming from places he couldn’t remember being hurt. </p><p>His mother lectured him about not talking, because for some reason he had done so, and looked approvingly at him when he agreed and stayed silent. </p><p>But things became fuzzy after that. </p><p>He would be gone from his own body for days at a time after that, always coming back to his body being in pain and him not remembering anything that had happened, just the aftermath. He was a kid, and Neil was glad to not be able to remember why he had so many purpling bruises on his hands, nor why his mother seemed so upset with him.</p><p>It started to become a problem when they arrived in Germany. </p><p>There were times when all he did for minutes at a time were stare blankly into space, trying to concentrate on being in his own body, in his own head, while some phantom force seemed to attempt to shut him out into oblivion. He couldn’t allow that, not when it was so important to behave for his mother, not when their lives were on the line. </p><p>But it happened, much without his own choice in the matter. Neil should have been relieved that he didn’t have to remember much of the bad things that had happened to them, but he was older than he had been when this first started and he needed to remember everything he could- it was already difficult that he couldn’t remember some of the languages that his mother had tried to teach him. </p><p>She had gotten mad at him once for not knowing how to speak French, swearing that he’d been fluent in it a few days ago, during one of his episodes. </p><p>Neil didn’t know what to think about that. He didn’t remember much of that time, only really coming back to himself months later, waking in the morning in an unfamiliar hotel room with his mother at his back. He found out hours later that they were in Seattle. </p><p>He was sixteen, then. It didn’t feel like he was sixteen, though, and he hardly recognized himself in the mirror, which he usually shied away from. He couldn’t remember why, though. Not until a voice helpfully supplied to him that it was “because you look like Nathan”. There it was, another person in his head. He assumed that he’d gone crazy- what else could Neil expect? </p><p>And then he was pushed away, once more, even though he’d only gotten to be there for a few hours. This time, though, it wasn’t that dark abyss that he’d always been shoved into. He appeared in a bright room, filled with all the things he’d ever wanted and never had. There was a train set in the corner, model airplanes floating from the ceiling, even lego setups in the golden windowsill. </p><p>Neil never wanted to leave. He explored the room for hours at a time, eventually mustering up the courage to leave it, stumbling down the unfamiliar stairs and into what looked like a kitchen, except it was all warm and fuzzy. </p><p>A woman stood at the sink, washing strange fruit that Neil had never seen before. Once he made a knock on the wall, meaning to be quiet, she turned and beamed a smile to him. </p><p>“Hello, there.” Her voice was as soft as she looked, which put Neil to ease. This woman seemed nice, nicer than his mother at least. “Hi.” He squeaked out, and that was the beginning of his friendship with the woman who introduced herself as Alice.</p><p>It wasn’t until a year later that he was brought to the front again, this time on an unfamiliar beach that smelled like smoke and something bad. There was somebody with him, in his head, a boy’s voice that ordered him to get up, to get away, and that was what he did. </p><p>He didn’t stop running until he reached Millport, Arizona, and although the voice wanted him to go farther, he couldn’t. He didn’t want to. There was exy, and he liked exy, and so he was staying and there was nothing that the voice could do to persuade him otherwise.</p><p>The voice stayed with him most of that year. There were a few days that he was on his own, but whenever he needed guidance or somebody to take over for a bit, there they were. It wasn’t too bad, getting to go to school and play exy and have something to keep him company. Sometimes, the voice even talked about his mother, who he missed. They explained that she was no longer with them, and he knew not to mention it again.</p><p>But then everything changed the last game of the year, with Hernandez saying that somebody was there for him. The voice started to shout, and he spaced out momentarily, almost getting shoved away again. He wasn’t, though, because he had too much riding on this and he wanted to stay, goddamnit, so the voice was with him and he was there, pain in his stomach and wheezing on the floor. </p><p>A blond man stood above him, talking with the coach about something, and Neil found it hard to look away even when the voice took over his words and spat them out, mean words that Neil did not like to say. </p><p>And that was the beginning of an end to the existence of giraffes and the way Neil was or was not his own person.</p>
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